Chapter 4.2

"The wife from the Yasumori's passed away, you said?" Kiyomi said as soon as she entered into the break room. Within the breakroom were only Ritsuko, Satoko and Yasuyo. It seemed Mutou was talking with Toshio about what to do with Setsuko, so Kiyomi must have heard about Setsuko from Yuki.

"Even though she was doing so well again, too!" Kiyomi breathed a sigh.

Really, Yasuyo agreed as she wiped with a dust cloth. "I'd thought it might have even been cured this time too, but. It must mean it really is over for those who have that, huh?"

As she was murmuring the phone rang. Ritsuko who was the closest picked up the receiver. This is Towada, said a voice sounding strange as if through grit teeth. Come to think of it, they hadn't seen him yet today, Ritsuko realized at that moment.

"Uhm... I'm sorry, I, quit."

Eh, Ritsuko asked back in surprise.

"Please tell the doctor. ...I'm scared. I don't want to be in the village anymore."

Ritsuko was startled. At the word 'scared', the white human figure she'd seen the night before crossed through her mind but she lightly shook her head so as not to remember it. 

"I am really sorry. Please forgive me."

Ritsuko didn't know what to say to him. She couldn't very well blame Towada. He was on the front lines. Ritsuko and the other nurses knew as much in their own way. They knew what they should and shouldn't be going, and even if it were an unknown disease, it wasn't the same thing as some kind of monster. But Towada who worked in the office couldn't know that the same way.

"....I understand. But, if you could, please contact the doctor with this. If it's hard to say, then even by letter..."

I will, Towada said, hanging up the phone. Ritsuko also put the phone back on as the three faces in the room looked to her.

"It was Towada-san. ... It seems he's quitting."

Kiyomi let out a large sigh as she say down in the chair. "Good grief. I feel sorry for Mutou-san too. Things had just lightened up for him with Shizuko-san coming in to help him, too."

"You said it," Yasuyo nodded. "Even so, if we did try to make him stay, on the off chance something did happen, we would be the ones who would end up responsible though, huh?"

Speaking as if talking to herself, she threw down the dust cloth as a washed out feeling came over her. 

"It's the sickness," Kiyomi said with her chin in her hands. "To be honest, they're felling me at my house to quit, too."

"Well dear me."

"My husband has been. ... It's become a rumor lately you know, that there's a disease spreading. When he asked me what that was about, even I couldn't not say that t might just be the case now could I? Since then, he's always: 'Couldn't you quit?' We have a child too, who's still young. When he asks if it's really safe and gets pushy about it, I don't really have an answer."

"It's not for nothing, I see where your husband's coming from. To start with even if you don't work, you'd at least have enough to get by on."

"That's right. Even I think whether to keep working or not or whether to just depend on my husband. Either way, if I was going to become a burden on him, to the point where I'd quit, I could find another job as a nurse, he's even said."

"If only we at least knew the way it spread. We're of course being careful but. Or else knowing how to treat it, knowing it could be cured, that would be something at least."

"That's right. The Yasumori's wife seemed to be doing well, so I'd been counting on that much but."

"It's fatality rate is one hundred percent isn't it, right now. I'm scared too! Wakingup feeling sluggish, why, I've certainly suffered as much!"

Ritsuko nodded internally to their conversation, but she couldn't forget the figure she'd seen the night before. It resembled Nao, someone who couldn't have been Nao. Disappearing towards the hospital, and then Setsuko died---.

"Really, I wonder if it is an epidemic disease at all..." Ritsuko said without thinking. Kiyomi and Yasuyo looked blankly at her. Rather, the one who nodded was Isaki Satoko.

"Like, something about it being an epidemic seems off, doesn't it. Don't you feel that way too?"

Kiyomi and Yasuyo looked to each other. Ritsuko was surprised enough that Satoko had nodded.

"Uhm, Sato-chan? I was just talking for the sake of it, so..."

"Is that so? I for one think that it feels a little strange. This morning, when the doctor called me into Setsuko-san's sick room, it smelled like incense."

"That's...." Yasuyo blinked. "That's because she was dead."

"That's right. That's why I thought that the doctor had lit it for Setsuko-san's sake at the time. But there was no incense burner. Like it had already been put away. If he was burning incense, wouldn't he leave it to burn until the family came for the body?"

"Well... That's true, too."

"Everybody took part in the post-death treatments. Even though he could have just left it to us. To start with, isn't it a little strange that the doctor said we didn't need to take shifts once Setsuko-san was hospitalized? Even though he had the Junior Monk help when the Junior Monk can't do anything. If there was anything to have him do, it would be too important for him."

"That's true," Yasuyo said, as Ritsuko interrupted.

"About that, it looks like that wasn't the case. Yesterday, I'd asked him about that."

Ritsuko explained that Seishin had come asking for Toshio's help and so that was why he was staying with him while he was on duty but Satoko made a stern expression at that.

"Then isn't that even more strange? He went through the trouble of having the patient hospitalized, and wasn't that so he wouldn't take his eyes off of her? To think, he'd casually chat about a novel like that!"

"Was it something that severe?"

"If it wasn't there'd be no reason to hospitalize her would therE?"

"I wonder if it wasn't just to see how the disease progressed? More than to try to treat or cure the patient," Yasuyo said, but Satoko shook her head.

"Even so something feels strange. Suddenly, he tried hospitalizing Setsuko-san, and yet he says we don't need to do shifts. Without a word to any of us though, he has an amateur, a monk, accompany him on the shifts. Suddenly there're fewer observation notes---lately, I don't know what's going through the doctor's head."

Yasuyo groaned, Kiyomi tilted her head uneasily. Ritsuko couldn't help but nod. Yes, lately Toshio's words and actions didn't follow any logical path. They couldn't see it any other way.

"...It might not be an epidemic." Satoko murmured.

Kiyomi's voice was low. "Then, poison, for example?"

Satoko glanced up fleetingly at Kiyomi. "....There are The Risen, aren't there?"

Ritsuko felt as if Satoko had taken the words out of her mouth.

"The Risen..."

"That's ridiculous," Kiyomi laughed. "Oh come on. Just when I wonder what you're going to say! Sato-chan, aren't you taking too much after Yuki-chan?"

Satoko turned her eyes towards Kiyomi, staring at her, and then letting out a heavy sigh with a laugh of her own. 

"You're right. It's stupid, isn't it?"

Yasuyo broke out into a laugh too. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe the dead really are rising up. And because of that, people are dying, and those dead are rising up, too. Then it would seem like an epidemic, to be certain."

Satoko blushed as if embarrassed as she laughed. "What? So that's why he called in the Junior Monk. To do a prayer."

"If that's it, it's a quick fix," Kiyomi said laughing harder. "We'll just do another mushiokuri. That would settle everything, wouldn't it?"

"Good plan," someone said and the three collapsed into laughter. Ritsuko put on a laughing face but she could feel the stiffness in her expression.

The figure that looked like Nao. Someone who definitely shouldn't have been Nao. Disappearing into the hospital before Setsuko died.

(The Risen....)

Ridiculous, she thought. Hearing the other three laughing, she really did think it was completely ridiculous. Something like that couldn't exist. To think she had been serious about it, it was enough to make her laugh.

(But...)

But still, Ritsuko thought, even as she joined in with the other three, even as her laugh changed to a genuine one.